stasdm

Hi,

What do you think of this beast?

What is surely wrong and what may be done better?

dai

post the details of what it is here

stasdm

CoolerMaster Stacker 810 ATX (RC-810) and CoolerMaster Stacker 810 STC-T01-UWK
Two StarTech.com SATABAY5BK and one StarTech.com SATABAY3BK HDD racks
Two CoolerMaster Stacker 810 cases connected into one structure
CoolerMaster RC-810 PSU compartment used for installation of expansion tray, PCU installed into CoolerMaster STC-T01-UWK upper position. Lower PCU compartment and backplane modified to install external and internal expansion trays (four more second-hand or very cheap boxes used as donors for additional slots frames/backplanes
24 x 5.25" bays total, of them:
2 - power and front connectors units (one power set hidden), 3 - optical drives, 1 - FDD and flash reader, 1- universal "guest HDD" case, 8 - HDD cages, 2 - SDD cage, 1 - fans control
One 1250W ENERMAX EGX1250EWT PSU
Supermicro X8DAH+ motherboard
2 x Intel Xeon W5580 processor
72GB DDR3 RDRAM 1066MHz memory (48GB used as RAM drive)
Supermicro RSC-R2UE-A3E8, Supermicro CSE-RR2UE-AX risers and IEI HPE-5S1-R10 backplane used as expansion boards
Two Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphics cards
Adaptec 51245 RAID adapter
Supermicro M28E1B drive cage with 4-to-8 backplane
SYBA SD-PCXSA2-2E2R SATA II RAID Controller Card
Creative's Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Champion sound card
SYBA SD-PEX-FWB PCI-Express 1394 FireWire Card
Internally installed two Zonet ZUH2215V cards providing additional front USB ports
6 x OCZ Vertex OCZSSD2-1VTX30G 2.5" 30GB SSD in RAID 5
12 x Samsung SpinPoint F1 HD322HJ in RAID 5
LG GGW-H20L Blu-Ray DVD-RW + HD reader
LG GH22LS30 DVD-RW with LightScribe
LITE-ON IDE CD-RW
Sabrent CRW-FLP2 USB Floppy Drive and 68in1 USB 2.0 Internal Memory Card reader
Universal 3.5" IDE, 2.5" IDE and SATA HDD "guest box"
NEC Display Solutions LCD3090WQXi-BK monitor
Logitech Z-5500 audio
Microsoft Keyboard 4000
Wacom Intuos4 Large
Logitech ClearChat PC Wireless
Cirago BTA-6060 USB 2.0 Bluetooth Adapter
AVerMedia AVerTV Hybrid Ultra USB
Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000


Front ports:
USB - 10 x USB 2.0
IEEE 1394 - 2 x IEEE 1394a
SATA - 1 x SATA, 1 x eSATA
Audio in/out

Rear ports:
2 x PS/2
6 x USB 2.0
2 x IEEE 1394a, 2 x IEEE 1394b
1x Optical, 1x Coaxial S/PDIF Out
8-channel Audio I/O
2 x RJ45 LAN port
2 eSATA
COM port
2 x HDD MOLEX, 2 x 3-pin fan connectors

Universal 3.5" IDE, 2.5" IDE and SATA HDD "guest box" description is on the mentioned site, in short - connectors and cables to support any guest HDD in AOC BOX-MK-BK case.

Seems that's all

dai

Two CoolerMaster Stacker 810 cases connected into one structure

i like this always considered cases need to be 2 inches wider

but a bit over the top for normal use

Phædrus2401

What could you possibly use this for? Gaming? Then why the Xeon CPUs? A server? Then why the XFired 4870x2s? And the case? What? And all the expansion cards! What in the world is this all about?

stasdm

Home work/entertainment system. Some gaming too, but mainly 3D/2D graphics. All other too.

Would not mind i7 if you'll advice one that will allow huge RAMdrive

4870x2s because they are much cheaper than same breed "pro" cards and may be easily made to run pro and streaming drivers.

If you can install that minimal i/o cards set specified w/o expansion cards - please adwise which way.

Case: may you install specified hardware in one-case system? Please mind that CD/DVD drives are NOT fully backward/forward compatible

Phædrus2401

What do you mean by "2D/3D" graphics? 'Cause the 4870x2s are only good for gaming. They're either inefficient for or overkill for everything else.

stasdm

It nicely work with (slightly hacked) pro drivers. Really ATI (and nVIDIA) latest "pro" and "GPGPU" cards are same as gaming ones (with a bit more memory). the only difference is in software. nVIDIA is a bit more difficult to hack - they themself often forget to add support to this or that hardware in some places (that is why nearly all their new cards are with lots of glitches - corrected in the second or third drivers releases).

What is more - ATI pro drivers do not suppot Crossfire, but adding some parts of gaming ones cures the problem.

Phædrus2401

Ah, I see. A hackin-card. Well, if you've got this working already, good luck then. I don't know much about RAMdrives and such. This is getting into unfamiliar territory for me. I will say that two Xeon quad cores is probably overkill for everything, yet inefficient at gaming. A core i7 build would probably be what I would choose, but I don't know all of what your requirements are, so I don't know.

stasdm

Can you tell any difference between the two ('cept for memory controller setup)?

Tyree

Xeon CPU's are designed for Servers.
I really don't see any point to the whole build.
A Dual Core E8500 is the best gaming CPU at this time.

stasdm

1. Nehalem Xeon and Nehalem Core i7 is absolutly the same chip (well, i7's are slightly abridged in memory use and QPI number - I think after production (no sence to have different design for thouse two).

2. The rig is not for gaming (though should support), but a workstation mainly)

3. Dual Core E8500 is good for nVIDIA chipset boards - they really cannot make more from the faster ones (nVIDIA chipsets limit is 1.2GB/s max total CPU-periferials throughput).
.

Tyree

Intel CPU's and Nvidia Chipsets do NOT get along well and are ,in fact, known to have issues.